Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (Socrates Fortlow 1) (12 page)

Darryl was in too deep and he knew it. He hunched his shoulders and let his head loll to the side.

“They worried ’bout them young college Negroes. Maybe they makin’ bombs down there. Even worse: maybe they gonna get all the other Negroes to vote. An’ it’s black cops too. Me an’ Right seen’em. Black cops spyin’ on black college kids while Jamal right down the street gettin’ his dick suck. Do that sound like the law to you, Darryl?”

The boy shook his head with a confused look in his eye.

“Three cops on ev’ry shift. Three shifts,” Right said. “You know we figger that, with benefits an’ expenses, they payin’ at least twenty-five hunnert dollars a day just to look at them kids. Here you got twenty old people right here could hardly pay for food. It’s a damn shame.”

“An’ if that ain’t bad enough there’s a crack house runnin’ almost next do’,” Socrates said. “Two houses down an’ them cops been there … how long is it now, Burke?”

“Four weeks.”

“Four weeks,” Socrates continued. “Four weeks. An’ you know there’s been half a dozen people shot or stabbed on this here block in the last four weeks. It takes the cops quarter of a hour at least to answer nine-one-one an’ them cops in that house don’t make a peep. Not a goddam peep.”

“Mm!” Right Burke grunted. “Damn shame.”

“
S
ocrates Fortlow!” a woman’s voice declared. “What the hell you doin’ on my front steps?”

“Uh-oh,” Right said.

“Hey, Luvia,” Socrates greeted the gaunt-faced woman. She was coming up the stairs quickly. Socrates rose to meet her. “This here is Darryl. Stand up, Darryl, an’ meet Right’s landlady.”

Darryl did what he was told. He stood up straight and put his hand out at the sapling-thin woman.

“Who’s this, Socrates?” she asked.

“My friend. Ex-chicken thief. He’s a boy lookin’ for a good deed to commit.”

“Well let me tell you, boy,” she said. “You wanna do somethin’ good then you should get away from this man here. He anything but good.”

“That’s okay, Luvia. You don’t have to like me. But Darryl here might be comin’ ’round sometimes. Just ’cause you hate all men I hope you still got a little heart for a man-child.”

Right Burke laughed and Luvia slapped his shoulder.

“Get offa my property, Socrates Fortlow! Git!” she yelled.

“See ya later, Right,” Socrates said. He and Darryl went down the stairs and back the way they had come.

{3.}

“Why she hate you?” Darryl asked when they were down the block.

Socrates grinned and said, “That’s a good woman, boy. Good woman. She run that house for poor black folks when half the time she broke at the end of the month. If it wasn’t for donations from her church you know the county marshal woulda repossessed by now.”

“But why do she hate you?” Darryl asked again.

“’Cause she’s a good woman.” There was a wistful note in Socrates’ voice. “And I’m anything but good. Luvia could smell the bad on me. All she had to do was to see me once an’ she knew what I was. An’ you know she’s a Christian woman too.”

“But if she religious don’t that mean she should forgive you?”

“Christians believe in redemption, that’s true. But usually you have to die in order t’get it. I guess Luvia would say a few nice words if I died. But it would take somethin’ like that. It sure would.”

T
hey stopped for popsicles at a little store on Central and then went on toward Socrates’ home.

“You have a good time, Darryl?” Socrates asked the boy. It was getting late in the afternoon. The sky toward the ocean was changing from dusty blue to a light coral color.

“Yeah,” the boy said tentatively. “But I still don’t know what I have to do. I cain’t see nuthin’ ’bout that crack house and the Africans. An’ you know I ain’t gonna get close to them cops. I’m just little. I need sumpin’ little t’do.”

Socrates smiled. His legs were beginning to ache from the walk. “What you think about them Young Africans? I mean, how come you don’t like ’em?”

“You know. They always talkin’ like they know shit an’ we stupid ’cause of our music or whatever, you know. I mean they up in their house tryin’ t’tell us how t’live an’ they ain’t no better. They ain’t got no money or no nice car.”

“So? At least they’re trying to make somethin’ better. Right?”

“Maybe so. But I still don’t have to like’em.”

“Let’s stop a minute, little brother. My legs ain’t young like yours is.” Socrates halted and leaned up against the wall of a boarded-over hardware store. He took a deep breath and smiled at the multicolored sky. “I don’t like’em neither,” he said. “I mean I like what they say but words ain’t deeds. They don’t know how to deal wit’ people.”

“What you mean?” Darryl asked.

Socrates saw in the boy an honest question. He saw that Darryl really respected him, really wanted to know what he thought. The idea that Darryl wanted to hear what he had to say scared Socrates.

“You don’t teach people, you love’em. You don’t get a house and a printin’ press and put up a fence. You do like Luvia. You open up your arms and your pocketbook. You don’t have to worry ’bout no cops. Cops don’t mean shit. But you don’t let no crack house be on your street neither. Uh-uh.

“You got to love your brother. An’ if you love’im then you wanna make sure he’s safe.”

“That’s like in a gang,” Darryl said.

“Yeah.” Socrates nodded. “In a way it is. But in a way it ain’t neither. The Young Africans like a gang. They got their code an’ their colors. They ready to go to war. An’ that’s fine. Sometimes you got to go to war. But most the times you should be helpin’. You should be laughin’ an’ eatin’ good an’ you should go to bed knowin’ that they ain’t nobody hungry on yo’ street.”

Darryl was looking deeply into Socrates’ eyes. He heard the word
hungry
. Socrates knew that he would.

“So it’s only that lady hate you doin’ right on Marvane,” Darryl said.

“Uh-huh. The only one gonna make black people feel good. The only one got a right to go to war.”

Darryl and Socrates started walking again. Neither one said anything until they reached Socrates’ back door. They went inside and took turns going to the bathroom.

When they were sitting again Socrates asked, “So what you gonna do now?”

“I gotta get home.”

“I mean what you gonna
do
, boy?”

Darryl stared at his mentor but there were no words in his mouth, no thoughts behind his eyes. Socrates was reminded of hours and years spent behind bars with nothing in his head. He remembered thinking that the only thing to life was feeling pain—or not feeling it.

“What should I do?” Darryl asked.

“I don’t know, Darryl. Maybe, maybe you should dream.”

“Huh?”

“You still have bad dreams at night?”

“Not too much. If I do, an’ I wake up, then I think that I’m gonna do sumpin’ an’ I go back to sleep.”

“That’s good,” Socrates said. “’Cause a boy needs sleep, you know. How he gonna go to school and answer hard questions like the ones you got if he don’t get his rest?”

“What questions?”

“Marvane Street.”

Darryl cocked his round head to the side and nodded. He blinked and then nodded again.

Socrates put his hand on Darryl’s shoulder. “You know there’s only two things that a poor boy like you gotta do, Darryl.”

“What’s that?” Darryl put his hands up and touched Socrates’ arm. It was a light touch, and brief.

It didn’t hurt at all.

“First you got to survive,” Socrates said. “Then you got to think; think and dream.”

Darryl nodded. He said, “But I prob’ly get killed.”

“No you won’t, boy. I won’t allow that.”

“But how could you stop it?”

“I don’t know,” Socrates said. “But I ain’t alone. If they start shootin’ on your block, then you come here to me. If I cain’t help ya we go to Right and Luvia. She got a whole church wit’ her.

“You see, Darryl, a boy like you might have to go underground.”

“Like in a hole?”

“Not a real hole. But you might have to hide from people. You be there but they won’t know it.”

“But what if they wanna get me at school?”

“Then you get outta school an’ learn someplace else.”

“I could do that?”

“You can do anything, boy. Just as long as you alive—you could do anything.”

{4.}

That night Socrates had a dream:

He dreamt that he was sleeping in a tiny room, no larger than a closet. He was dreaming about the rain when there came a violent knock on the door. He jumped up and crouched down at the end of his canvas cot, scared of the powerful blows that had awakened him.

“Socrates!” a bass voice boomed. “Socrates!”

And then Socrates woke up.

But when he went back to sleep that big voice called out his name again. This time it was even louder and Socrates lurched awake.

Five times the voice called to him and five times he woke up panting. He decided on that last awakening that he wouldn’t run from the voice again.

He fell asleep and the voice called.

“What you want?” Socrates yelled, ashamed of himself for shivering.

“Come on out here!” the voice commanded.

Socrates opened the door. He found himself standing before a towering, jet-black man. A man with a broad broad nose and sensual big lips. The man’s eyes were stern and his shoulders were wide as a sail.

“Come on!” the big man said. And they were walking outside in the driving rain.

The weather was strange to Socrates because even though it was night and cloudy and raining, in the far-off distance he could see the moon illuminating a small hill. The light from the moon lit the field through which he and his big companion traveled.

They walked for a long time, until Socrates’ legs began to ache. They came at last to a giant stone arch that had the words SOULS END chiseled into its crown. Beyond the arch, bathed in rain and lit by a golden moon, stretched a graveyard that went on for hundreds of miles. The graveyard went so far that at its farthest limit it reached into daylight.

It was the graveyard for all the black people that had died from grief. Each grave was marked by a small granite stone, hardly larger than a silver dollar.

“Here!” the big man said. He handed Socrates a spade. “We got to dig all’a them up now. It’s time.”

“All that!” Socrates yelled over the squall.

“Every one,” the big man said.

“I cain’t do it!”

“But you could try!”

“It’d kill me!”

The giant gestured toward the graves with a hand even larger than Socrates’. “We all die!”

Socrates came awake again. He sat up and laughed so hard that he had to get up out of the bed. He laughed so hard that his side hurt and he sank to his knees. After laughing he ran to the toilet and threw up the beef and mushroom gravy he’d had for dinner the night before.

“It was like …” he said to Right Burke a few weeks later. “It was like I was a child seein’ lightnin’ for the first time. The light show made me all giddy but the thunder scared me down to my boots.”

M
AN
G
ONE

{1.}

It was five thirty-six p.m. by Socrates’ new digital watch when Corina Shakur came calling. He knew it was her knocking but he went to the door anyway. She stood a few feet back, showing no intention of coming any closer.

“Have you seen’im?” the tall young woman asked, her lips and nose curling into disgust.

“Hi, Corina,” Socrates answered, smiling. “What you doin’ here? You lookin’ for Howard?”

Corina was too angry to answer his polite question. She moved her head from one side to the other and clutched her shoulders, clenching them tightly as if trying to make her body into a fist.

“Come in,” he said. “Come on in.”

Before she could decline, Socrates turned around and went back into his small apartment. He took the two and a half steps across his kitchen and went through the doorless doorway into his sleeping room.

“I’ll get you a chair from in here, Corrie,” he called over his shoulder. “I fount me some old kitchen chairs an’ patched’em up.”

Socrates picked up the yellow vinyl-and-chrome chairs and carried them back to the kitchen. Corina was standing in the doorway, the sun silhouetting her long curving figure.

“Come on in, Corrie,” Socrates said. He was squinting and smiling and feeling spry.

“I ain’t got time to be wastin’ ’round here, Socrates Fortlow.” Corina held back, speaking to him as if she were calling across a river.

“Okay,” Socrates said. He positioned a chair to face her, then sat himself down. “But you don’t mind if I take a load off, now do ya?”

“Do what you want.”

“You lookin’ for Howard?” Socrates asked.